And — because I still know which one of the two I’d rather spend the rest of my days with — shouldn’t any rational comparison between El and Grier favour the one who has to work at being attractive, rather than the one who can’t help it?
We finally whistle past the Kia on a long, dipping straight. It’s a simple, safe, even elegant bit of overtaking, but the wee old guy driving — hunched down, staring forward with an expression of pinched, peering concentration and gripping the steering wheel like a lifebelt in a storm — still flashes his lights at us.
‘And you, sir,’ I murmur, looking in the side mirror.
‘Oh, now,’ Ellie says. ‘Probably just trying to wash his windscreen.’ Then I hear her take a breath. ‘Listen,’ she says.
‘I don’t want you to—’ Ellie starts. She sighs. ‘I don’t want you to …’ Her voice trails off. She shakes her head, puffs her cheeks and blows air out, making the kind of noise I associate with exasperated Parisian taxi drivers. She looks at me. I’m looking at her. ‘It is…over,’ she says, turning her attention back to the road. She spares me only occasional glances after this.
‘You mean you and me?’ I ask.
‘Yeah. I’m not…It’s all in the past now, yeah? All done with. Water under the bridge, soap under the wedding ring and all that. That’s how you feel? I mean, it is, isn’t it?’
‘Here.’ She passes me an opened half-litre bottle of mineral water without looking at me. ‘Not what it says on the label, mind; best Toun watter fra tha tap back hame.’
‘Thanks.’ I drink, taking my time.
‘You were saying,’ she says.
I hand her the bottle back. ‘I don’t expect anything from you, Ellie. I mean, not even forgiveness. I’m certainly not back…I’m not here expecting you to, you know, umm, fall into my arms or anything. Ahm…Too much has happened, we’ve been apart too long, and in the end…well, I did what I did. But I’m still, as our American cousins would say…I still have feelings for you.’ My mouth has gone dry again and I have to clear my throat once more. ‘For whatever that’s worth.’ I take a deep breath. ‘And if it’s worth nothing, then that’s fair enough. I accept that. But I…I just don’t want to lie to you.’
She nods thoughtfully, drives calmly.
‘You asked, so I’m telling you,’ I tell her. But by this point I start to realise I’m talking just to fill the silence, and so I shut up.
‘Okay,’ she says. There’s a pause. ‘Okay.’
There’s a long silence af ter this, but it is — I think — companionable.
‘So,’ I find myself saying eventually, ‘did you come to find me at Al and Morven’s…because the boys roughed me up?’
She looks thoughtful, still concentrating on the road ahead. ‘I suppose I did. They’d made me angry, made me want to get back at them. Told them I was coming over to your mum and dad’s, just to talk to you. Or I’d make a point of seeing you at the funeral tomorrow, and Donald would know all about it if they even thought of threatening you again. So…stupid.’ She shakes her head. ‘And then bragging to me about it.’
‘Unintended consequences.’
She snorts. ‘At least with Murdo and Norrie you know it is unintended. Nothing as sophisticated as reverse psychology ever clouded their motivations. If Grier did something like that, the first thing you’d think would be, What’s she
‘Seriously? She’s that Machiavellian?’
‘Oh, you’ve no idea.’ Ellie sucks in a breath. ‘Remember that thing about Grier creeping into Callum’s bed when she was just a kid?’
‘Umm,’ I say. ‘…Yeah.’
The ‘umm’ was a kind of lie, and so was the pause before ‘yeah’: artificial hesitations while I pretended to delve down into my memory. In reality, of course, I remembered instantly because I was talking about this just an hour or two ago, with Ferg. I feel like a complete shit for even this tiny deception.
‘Well, we all kind of accepted nothing happened,’ Ellie says. ‘But a few years later Grier actually talked about having something over Callum, about having power over him. It was the first time — and last time — we ever got drunk together, left alone in the house when she was still under age. She talked about changing her story and claiming that she’d repressed the memory of Callum raping her or sexually assaulting her that night; telling Callum that she’d pull this stunt if he didn’t do something she wanted him to do.’
‘Fuck me.’ I’m staring at Ellie. ‘What? What did she want him to do?’
